Rocket Dawn

by Richard Tongue

  “The Europeans would have found out the secret. I’m guessing they know about it as well, and hoped to find evidence of the conspiracy here.” Glaring at Murphy, Knox added, “After all of this time, how much difference can it possibly make?”

  “We’re attempting to build bridges with the Russian successor states. There’s another Great Game going on out there, America, Europe, China, all trying to form alliances that will shape the fate of the world for the next century. We can’t afford to have those countries find out what we did. The scandal would ruin our relations with Siberia, Tatarstan, a dozen others. Better to let the secret die, and let this asteroid fly past as God intended.” She paused, then said, “I’d intended an accident with one of the seismic charges. Bury the damned thing once and for all. Do you really think this secret is worth all of your lives?”

  “Maybe not,” Knox said, yielding a furious glare from Antonova, “but I know one thing. The conspiracy that you’ve woven together now is well worth exposing, no matter what it takes. The secret is out, Major, one way or another. You can’t stop us contacting LeGrand when he arrives, and unless we cooperate with you, there’s no chance that you’re going to meet that launch window. Not without killing all of us. I’d suggest you get on with it. Assuming you’ve got the guts.” He raised his pistol towards her, and added, “If you don’t, I will.”

  “You’re bluffing,” she replied.

  He advanced towards her, and said, “Not this time.”

  She fired, a loud report echoing through the cabin, and Knox heard a loud cry of pain as the bullet slammed into Maxwell, the engineer moving to take the hit for him. Knox tried to fire his pistol, but as he had suspected, the mechanism had long since been vacuum-welded shut. Murphy dived for her spacesuit, sliding nimbly inside before anyone could stop her, reaching up to tug the hatch closed, her fingers getting out of the way with inches to spare.

  “No decompress alarm,” Knox said. “See to Max.” As Antonova dived for the medical kit, ripping it from the wall, he made his way to the hatch, trying to force it open. The same override was still in place, preventing him from freeing the hatch, and a red light snapped on, indicating that she’d left the ship on her journey across the asteroid. He turned to look at Maxwell, the red-faced engineer clutching at his arm, his face a mask of pain.

  “Went right through,” he said. “Bullet’s probably floating around in here somewhere. I reckon I killed most of its velocity, stopped it from hitting the hull.”

  “It’s not bad,” Antonova confirmed, a globule of crimson blood floating past her. “Where could she be going? There’s no point destroying my grandfather’s capsule now.”

  Knox’s face widened, and he said, “No, but she could destroy ours.”

  “What?”

  “Set off a charge underneath the hull. Wreck the ship. Hyperion will be here in twenty hours. She could live in her suit for that long, especially if she had a reserve tank stashed somewhere. Then she can tell them any story she wants.” He reached for a suit, and said, “I’ve got to stop her.”

  “Alone?”

  “You stay with Max. Fix him up, then get the communications system working. If we’re going to die out here, we can at least make sure Earth knows why.”

  Chapter 22

  Knox moved quickly across the terrain, his communicator turned off in violation of every safety protocol on the books. Stealth was his only true weapon now, and he had to prevent Murphy from tracking him across the surface. While she must suspect that somebody was going to come after her, he had to do everything possible to conceal his approach. In his hand, he held a long wrench, the most solid item he could find, but the reality was that if it came to any sort of melee, they would almost certainly both be killed. Nobody had ever designed a spacesuit for battle.

  He fired a quick pulse from his suit thrusters, trying to gain some speed. Antonova and he had positioned the seismic charges as one of their first tasks upon their arrival, the best way to determine the internal structure of the asteroid and learn whether it could possibly withstand the stresses involved in firing the mass driver, later on. They hadn’t planned to detonate them until they left Daedalus, just in case the effect was worse than they had feared. In fact, they could even be triggered from Vandenburg if necessary, and a flash of fear swept across him, wondering if some nameless operative had his finger on the trigger at that moment.

  Then, he saw her, well away from the charges. At least, well away from where he had originally positioned them, days before. Likely she’d managed to retrieve one during a sample spacewalk, hiding it in a safe place for precisely this purpose. She didn’t seem encumbered by anything, not at that stage, and he quickly realized where she was going. It should have been obvious, and he cursed himself for a fool. The only place she might have positioned it was close to the crevasse, set to bury the capsule forever. She could retrieve that unit, move it under Icarus, and detonate it, perhaps later retrieving a second charge to complete her original mission.

  It was all too neat, too easy. And he had to find a way to stop it, somehow, or be stranded here forever. She might have preserved the means of living until the arrival of Hyperion, but he hadn’t. He fired his jets again, gaining speed, smoothly gliding over the terrain in a series of long bounds in the ultra-low gravity, careful not to catch himself on any of the protruding rocks, a thousand sharp daggers reaching up from the ground.

  Murphy turned, and he knew the game was up. She’d seen him. The only question now was whether she had any more tricks hidden up her sleeve, any more secrets provided by her masters in a bid to ensure the success of her deadly mission. Already he had the feeling that she’d gone far off-script, but so far, she’d planned for every contingency, and if it hadn’t been for the heroism of Maxwell, her scheme would have been successful.

  She turned back to her work, reaching down into a chasm, straining to withdraw the charge. Knox took a deep breath, then dived towards her, gaining as much speed as he could, firing another pair of quick pulses from his suit thrusters to urge him on, drive him faster, faster, until he finally slammed into Murphy, sending them both tumbling away. He reached out for a rock, hoping to arrest his movement, but it crumbled in his hand, hurling him down the crevasse, back down towards Nelyubov’s final resting place.

  With a loud crack, he hit the rock, and an amber light flickered on his heads-up display. A precautionary warning, that the fabric of his suit was strained over his shoulder, that it might give out at any time. By the book, he needed to head home, right away, but if he didn’t finish what he had begun, his base would be nothing more than a collection of tumbling debris, molten metal raining down upon the face of the asteroid to add to the geologic devastation it had already suffered. Three, or perhaps four more bodies destined to rest here forever.

  He looked up, spotting Murphy’s shadow drifting across the hole. Rocks tumbled down towards him, and he tried to dodge out of the way, one of them bouncing off his helmet with an alarming thud. He started to climb, pushing himself up, writhing and wriggling as best he could to scramble out of the hole, struggling to free himself in time. Finally, he managed to emerge, soaring from the crevasse and over the terrain, in time to watch Murphy drag the charge free, turning to him with her pistol still in hand.

  “Unlike yours, this is designed to fire in a vacuum,” she said. “Just stay where you are.”

  “And then what?” he replied. “You’re going to kill me anyway. What do I have to lose?”

  “Nobody needs to die today. I’ve got a dead-man’s rig set on this charge. If my heart stops, it goes off. That’s my insurance. Now we’re both going back to the ship, I’m going to put the charge underneath the hull, and we’re going to start being a lot more reasonable about this entire situation. As soon as we get into contact with Earth, they’ll order you to follow my instructions in any case. We both know that.”

  “If you were as confident about that as you claim, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and I’d
be in receipt of a direct Presidential order.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You know we couldn’t let this get out. Not until we can do it in a controlled manner.”

  Knox hung still, resting on the asteroid, and replied, “You’ve got to sleep sometime.”

  “Not until we leave, and once we’re on our way to Gateway Station, I’ve won anyway. If you want to speed this up, you can go and get a second charge. This is the only one I modified, so we’re going to need another if we’re going to bury the past forever.” She paused, then added, “Let the dead sleep, Tom. What good will it do to drag all of this up?”

  “You don’t think that it is wrong that a conspiracy at the heart of the government has reached out here, all the way out into deep space, ready to snuff out the lives of four of its citizens? Life is not a numbers game, Commander. I would have thought you’d know that well enough. How many more sleeper agents are waiting, scattered throughout the space program, ready to strike at their own people. The military is meant to protect the people, not the government, not at their expense. Damn it all, you know that!”

  “I follow my orders, no matter what they are. I don’t get to choose them. In this case, though, I agree with them. Not that this discussion is anything other than purely academic at this stage, because one way or another, you are going to do precisely what I say, or I will kill you and do it anyway. You’ve got one chance to survive this mission. Even if you end up spending the rest of your life in a cell.”

  “Based on that, Commander, I really don’t have anything to lose, do I.” Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not going to obey your commands. I’m not going to place the lives of my crew in jeopardy. So you’re just going to have to shoot.” His hand had quietly reached across to his thruster controls, and as Murphy levelled the pistol, ready to take the shot that would end his life, he fired a quarter-second pulse, enough to send him flying high into the air, high over the asteroid. She turned, letting go of the charge and firing a shot, the bullet setting off his proximity alert but nothing more, skimming safely past him into endless space, the charge easily passing local escape velocity.

  He dived back towards her, wrench in hand, and she prepared to fire a second shot, bracing herself against the rock. Knox allowed her a moment of opportunity, drifting carelessly into direct line, throwing his wrench towards her to kick himself out of the way as she fired once more, his weapon hammering into the ground by her feet. That was the key. With his hands on the thrusters, he dived towards her, burning his precious fuel recklessly in a desperate bid to reach her before she could take her third, likely her final shot.

  Before she could aim, he smashed into her, sending the two of them tumbling again, but this time he managed to snap his reserve safety line to her suit, sending them spinning around and around. He fired another pulse from his thrusters to send them clear of the asteroid, hurled off into space. Murphy struggled to free herself with one hand, holding the gun with the other, not daring to shoot for fear of the effect the recoil would have. Knox had no such fears. He’d known this was likely a one-way mission, that there was no coming back from this. A risk he’d prepared to take, to save the others and see the secret released.

  “Let go, damn it!” Murphy yelled. “We can still make it back to the surface. You don’t have to die!”

  “You keep saying that as though you are the only one who has a say in the matter,” Knox replied. “Right now that looks like a mutual decision. Tell you what. Let go of the charge, let it fly, and we’ll go back to the ship, restore communications, and have a nice long talk with Mission Control about all of this. Odds are you won’t spend too long in Leavenworth. Not with the information you could pass on about the rest of your friends.”

  “Are you crazy? If it isn’t me, then it will be someone else. One of the crew of Hyperion is an agent. He’ll finish the job I began. There’s no way…”

  “Believe me, Felix was every bit as suspicious as I was, and will by now have taken all the precautions necessary to make sure your people don’t get away with this. Your secret is out. One way or another. Hell, there must be telescopes all over Earth watching our little dance right this minute, wondering what the hell is happening out here. How do you like the idea of seeing this live on CNN?”

  “You damned fool,” she replied, struggling as he attempted to take the gun. “What’s more important? Some crazy ideals or the future of your country?”

  “Funny,” he said. “I was under the impression they were one and the same thing.” As he struggled to take the sidearm, she fired again, the recoil sending her flying away from him, out to the extreme edge of the safety line, only guiding them further from the asteroid. On instinct, to spoil the shot he knew was coming, he reached for the line and pulled it as hard as he could, as though trying to drag a ship to the shore. Murphy struggled with her thrusters, firing again in a desperate bid to retrieve the situation, though Knox was able to counter her move with ease, tugging himself towards her again.

  This time, instead of aiming for her body, he aimed for her arm, taking the risk that she would not be able to turn in time to shoot her, a risk that paid off as she slammed into her outstretched hand, the gun flying away into the darkness, drifting clear of the two of them. Now they were evenly matched, drifting away from Daedalus, the asteroid visibly growing smaller as he watched.

  A faint crackle echoed in his helmet, and Knox said, “Icarus, do you read?”

  “Just barely, boss, but we’re getting our communications back. We haven’t aligned the antenna, so this is the best we can do for a few minutes. What’s happening out there?”

  “Detonate Charge Three.”

  “What?”

  “Do it, right now! That’s an order!”

  “No!” Murphy screamed. “Don’t do it, or we both die!”

  “I’m willing to accept that. Are you?”

  “Colonel,” Antonova said, “I can’t…”

  “Yes you can!” he yelled, snapping free the safety line with a quick click, the centrifugal force sending he and Murphy flying in different directions. “Detonate! Now!”

  Murphy looked up at him, terror on her face, desperately attempting to unstrap the seismic charge, a race that she could never win. A flash of light briefly illuminated the sky, and a second later, she was gone, torn to pieces by the explosion, only a few fragments of twisted metal remaining where she had once been. Warning alerts raced across Knox’s heads-up display, his suit stressed by the thermal shock far beyond safe limits, but that didn’t matter. Not now. A glance at his thruster fuel confirmed that. He’d spent that fuel like water in his struggle with Murphy, and now he was paying the price for his profligacy.

  No matter how he figured it, there was no way he could get back to the asteroid. Even with all the fuel he had left, he simply didn’t have the delta-v to approach it, still less manage a safe landing. He paused, sighed, then looked down at the tumbling rock, mentally calculating how long it would take Icarus to power up its flight systems, disengage from the asteroid and pick him up. At least four hours, probably longer, with only Antonova in a fit state to crew the ship. He’d be dead by then.

  “Kat, this is Knox,” he said. “Do you read me?” He waited for a reply, then added, “Do you read me?” Silence was his only answer. Possibly some undetected damage to his antenna, perhaps the improvised repairs she had attempted to Icarus’ communications systems had failed. It hardly mattered now. No matter what happened, whether or not he was able to contact anyone, he was going to die alone.

  His career had left no close ties. No wife, no children. Friends, family, people to mourn him, certainly, but life on Earth would go on just as well without him. A statue in his home town, a high school named for him somewhere else, some inevitable ghost-written biography pumped out, and that would be it. As though he had never been at all, just a name in a textbook, the subject of a class report for some bored fifth-grader in ten years’ time.

  And none of it mattered. He looked at the st
ars, the glorious, gleaming stars all around him, and was content. Just like the dead man who would now enter history in his own right, Grigori Nelyubov, the first human to set foot on another world, however fall. He’d followed in his footsteps, and was content enough with that. He continued to slowly tumble, and the beautiful blue marble of the Earth drifted into his field of vision, soft clouds over Africa as he watched, then the moon, the site of his earlier adventures, off to the left, shining in the Earthlight. A vision of loveliness, of beauty. A vision to be savored.

  A part of him was almost grateful that there was no contact with anyone. This was something for him to enjoy alone. He took a deep breath, then looked at his life system monitor again, wondering whether to make his end come more quickly. All he had to do was turn down the pressure, let it fall, and he’d fade away quickly, never knowing that anything had happened. Better that, perhaps, than to go down kicking and screaming, his last memories of a desperate, and pointless fight for survival. It was an option quietly included in every spacesuit, an override provided should someone drift away from their ship, their station. Not one that had been needed, until now.

  Just as he was making his decision, he heard another buzz on his helmet speakers, a voice saying, “Come in, Colonel Knox. Come in, at once.”

  “This is Knox. Who is this?”

  “I should be disappointed that you do not remember an old friend,” LeGrand replied. “We are on our way, and should have someone with you in a little over an hour.”

  “How the…”

  “My ship is on final approach, more cautious than yours, but we have more than sufficient fuel reserve to pick you up and return you to the surface. You will find our fares generous, but a tip would be appreciated. Just hold on and enjoy the splendid view.”